How tinnitus has changed my interactions with the world and people around me.
As appeared in the Western People, 14 January 2025.
According to the Cleveland Clinic, about 15% of the world’s population is affected by ‘tinnitus’ - essentially the experience of sounds filling your head that no one else hears (pic. iStock photo).
It was an afternoon in 2018 and I sat at my parents’ kitchen table working on my PhD thesis. I had a head cold, not in itself unusual as I seemed to always pick up any sinus illness going around, but especially that which blocked my inner ears.
This day was a little different though and I wore headphones to listen to the soundtrack of my life as I battled my way through eighteenth-century Irish tax records, seeking some references to poteen distillers in Mayo. I then remember that a high-pitched monotone, which had been bothering me on and off that day, suddenly increased in volume. I tore off my headphones, thinking it was the music, and in a panic thought my ears would explode (I have always had a melodramatic imagination). After some minutes passed, the loudness eased and I relaxed a little — returning to my laptop but without my headphones. But this new sound remained in my head.
The next day, I awoke to again hear this noise in my ears (or more accurately in my head as it is not directional) and a doctor’s visit suggested that once my sinus infection cleared up and the mucus affecting my inner ears dissipated, this ‘tinnitus’ would go. After some weeks, my infection indeed disappeared and I no longer sounded to myself as if I was speaking underwater. Yet this new ‘monotone’ never left and has remained with me to this day. I have never again heard true silence and there is no cure.
According to the Cleveland Clinic, about 15% of the world’s population is affected by ‘tinnitus’ - essentially the experience of sounds filling your head that no one else hears - like ringing, clicking, pulsing, humming or rushing. They can range in severity, with the worst forms affecting concentration or sleeping, with some suffering depression and are mainly caused by exposure to loud sounds, inner ear injuries, medications or age-related hearing loss but also with other causal factors. Essentially, there is no cure, with many sufferers coping with the trauma by using cognitive behavioural therapy or CBT, a form of psychotherapy that aims to reduce symptoms by (re)training the mind.
After some months of incredible anxiety and frustration, I gradually began adopting coping mechanisms. Usually, it means I expose myself to environmental noise, music or general hum of conversation which ‘drowns out’ my inner phantom ringing. Other times, I find ways of distracting myself in activities, especially in sports or gym work. The worst times are during the silence of the night when the world is hushed and all I can hear is the high-pitched whine permeating through my head. So typically, I go to bed late, leveraging my tiredness to overwhelm my tinnitus. I have recently found that podcasts about the complex mythology of the Jewish bible put me to sleep faster than any medication.
The behavioural effect of this persistent phantom noise in my head has made me more irritable and impatient with people (and myself). Usually, this is when I have stretched myself thin with work or have allowed life’s stresses to get on top of me. Yet, when I have apologised to others for curtly dismissing them or rudely asking them to repeat their conversation, I have never mentioned my motivation for doing so - that it was likely because I was otherwise preoccupied from a distracting loud noise that only I have the super-human ability to hear. Many have instead probably assumed I was just being an asshole. Sometimes they were probably right.
What has any of this to do with the price of mountainy ewes in Ballycroy? Nothing really or sheep anywhere else. But I reflected on my whole experience of tinnitus when I recently mentioned it to a friend of mine who I met during my Christmas visit home from Los Angeles. We were discussing the differences of living in rural North Mayo and one of the largest urban conurbations in the USA when my friend said that the silence must be very welcome when I came home. I suddenly realised that I have not heard true silence in almost seven years. Later that night, lying in bed, in an upstairs bedroom, when all outside was hushed during the dead of night, my inner phantom ringing was deafening and I mourned the loss of that peace. Eventually, sleep overtook me and the next day I again filled my routine with distractions.
We do not know the inner battles our fellow human beings are dealing with, yet we are quick to pass judgement on their actions and words - often in a denigrating or negative manner. I have done this in the past, seeing deliberate insult or malicious selfishness when people I interact with don’t respond with their full attention or thoughtlessly dismiss my own wants and needs.
It is a trope that Americans will tumble out all their issues and mental traumas to a stranger, just after an innocent ‘hello’ at a bus stop, while an Irish person will respond with an ‘I’m not so bad’ or ‘I could be worse’, even as a mad dog is chewing on their leg while their house is burning down. I do believe that we Irish are thus great actors, so we need to be especially aware that our fellow assholes may actually be experiencing severe trauma without a hint of it being revealed in normal day-to-day interactions. Indeed, those people who display anti-social tendencies or are just not nice people to be around may be going through a world of pain which has no window to the outside, some of it much worse than the most severe tinnitus.
This is not a sermon that we must all turn a blind eye to those that hurt us or our society. If I am being a bollox, then I want my friends to call me out on it (preferably, where I keep some sense of dignity!). However, there is a new tendency I think, where our virtual online world is creating silos of intolerance and we as humans have become more and more rigid in who we vilify and who we like. Life has always been much more nuanced and everyone has some faults to a greater or lesser degree. When someone presents to us with behaviour which we find unpleasant or nasty, we could do worse than choose to take a breath and be kind in our response. Nobody knows what tortured inner monologue is going on in that other person, or if they too have forever lost the sound of silence.
* If you have been affected by tinnitus, I would love to hear from you. You can contact me here.